Climate Talk Crisis: Where’s the Money?

h/t GWPF – UCS Strategy Director Alden Meyer has accused developed countries of “hiding behind the United States”, refusing to provide firm commitments to use taxpayers funds to pay large climate “damages” to poor countries.

Breakthrough eludes climate talks, scientists concerned over US role

Developing country negotiators lamented the fact that the United States, which has decided to pull out the Paris Agreement, was continuing to block any meaningful breakthrough on these issues and that other developed countries were not helping matters either.

With more than half the schedule of climate change conference already over, frustration was beginning to show at the lack of progress on any of the key issues under discussion, including the issues of finance, loss and damage, and ‘pre-2020 actions’. Developing country negotiators lamented the fact that the United States, which has decided to pull out the Paris Agreement, was continuing to block any meaningful breakthrough on these issues and that other developed countries were not helping matters either.

“Other developed countries are hiding behind the United States on loss and damage and finance issues. And, I think they need to be called out on this. They need to be asked whether they would side with (US President) Donald Trump or with the vulnerable countries of the world and meet their responsibilities,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, echoing what many country negotiators were saying off the record.

…

One of the options being discussed is to raise money through taxes on fossil fuel industry. “Countries are looking for money that is additional to the US$ 100 billion, because loss and damage is additional to the mitigation and adaptation needs. The US$ 100 billion was agreed upon long before the issue of loss and damages became part of discussions at these negotiations. The kind of money we are looking at … has to come by levying taxes on fossil fuel industry that has caused climate change in the first place,” Mohamed Adow, International Climate Lead at Christian Aid, said.

But the developed countries, mainly the US, have not been quite agreed to look at this, suggesting instead that insurance might be a good way to deal with the problem. “On loss and damage and finance, they (the US) have been taking a pretty hard line and that has started to cause some real anger,” Meyers said.

The reason poor countries stay poor is they are run by looters – nothing to do with climate.

The evidence of the Asian miracle, the rapid rise of formerly poor countries which embraced low tax free market economics and property rights is irrefutable.

Even Communist Dictatorships can prosper by following this simple recipe. Deng Xiaoping liberated China’s productive potential with his Four Modernisations programme in 1977.

Deng’s plan was simple; instead of everyone getting paid the same, people get paid according to how hard they work, how productive they are. The results were and are spectacular; The hard work of China’s people has in just a few decades transformed China from an economic basket case into an economic superpower.

All leaders who want to get rich have to do is curb their greed long enough to allow their people to prosper, to make sure people who work hard get to keep at least some of the money they make from their hard work.

Looters who can’t curb their greed always run out of money. Nobody tries to save money or build their businesses when prosperity just attracts the attention of thieves.

The fake climate crisis appeared to offer a chance for greedy third world looters who have squeezed their own national economies dry to get their hooks into Western prosperity. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few greedy Western politicians were also hoping to receive a slice of the action.

Their fury at being denied is understandable. They showed up hoping to help themselves to our cash, for what they likely thought was a done deal. Thanks largely to President Trump, it seems likely they will go home disappointed.

112 thoughts on “Climate Talk Crisis: Where’s the Money?”

Mmmm?! If you look around the world at the moment capitalism is about to fail in the most spectacular way. Unless we can convince the sheeple…fence sitting boneheads that believe the TV like a God to man up and take part in rooting out socialism in a goddamned bloody big hurry, it will be almost an inevitability that the globalists will take over and in the new world order it will be taught that capitalism didn’t work because of the greed of privileged white males.
And the sheeple will hate us. The problem has been understood since the Greeks who talked about the collapse of societies, and that one of the main indicators of a failing state is tolerance. Have a look at your own countries and ask yourselves …why do we accept all the insane crap that we are told we must tolerate? I don’t. But in Australia I am one in a hundred probably, and many people would call me a racist, but I couldn’t give a shit, most of my friends are foreigners of all types and they mostly completely agree with me having had experience in less fortunate countries and see white males as amazing achievers that are the least racist and most accepting people in the world. This is why they live in Australia now. However, most of us do what we are told and think what we are conditioned to think, often on the latest political whim, and so we slide in our standards and our freedoms are forfeited under pressure from the screeching classes and our once hard won beautiful free, prosperous and safe nations and societies seem doomed at this point in time.
Look for the slide in standards and fight back. The school that your kids attend is a big old socialist target, what do you personally do when your kid comes home and tells you that they want to be a transsexual homo freak etc because its cool now? And ask yourself, would this have been tolerated 30-40-50 years ago? Its everywhere, and if you don’t do anything about it…then who will? Trump has won you a little time to fight back…take it, or don’t…its your choice.

Capitalism began failing a long time ago thanks to the erosion by socialism.

In the UK, the Conservative party, our current government, is/was considered right wing, but it’s nothing of the sort. Examples;

When the Conservatives were elected under David Cameron, there was promised, a bonfire of the QUANGO’s (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation, for anyone that didn’t know). Instead, there was, in large part, a transfer of funds and ‘authority’ to charities to campaign for many of the same things the quango’s represented.

We have recently been instructed that we will all be driving electric vehicles by 2040 with no democratic input and no market force influence, it will be mandated.

In Scotland, with the rabidly socialist SNP devolved government, it has just been announced over the last few days that it will be the first country in the world to introduce minimum pricing for alcohol. It will be sold at 50p per unit of alcohol to discourage people from drinking cheap, high alcohol content beverages like cider. So a 3 litre bottle of cider at around £3 or so, will jump up to £11. Naturally enough, more expensive beverages like whisky at £15 a bottle won’t be affected. Whilst I recognise Scotland has a poor record relative to alcohol, this socialist attack on freedom of choice is symptomatic of our descent into a government ordered world.

But it gets worse. A year or two ago, the SNP government attempted to introduce a ‘named person’ bill that mandated that every child in Scotland would be appointed a named, responsible adult to, wait for it……..protect children from their own parents. I think that one, quite rightly, bombed, but I have no doubt it will be resurrected by these power crazed socialists.

And one more. There is a bill currently going through the Scottish parliament that prohibits parents from smacking their children. There is of course sufficient provision to punish people for assaulting their children, but that’s not enough for the socialist maniacs, every single minute aspect of everyone’s lives must be controlled by the jackbooted SNP state mechanism.

The problem is democracy. People are beginning to understand the system. You can vote to give yourself decades of pension benefits and someone else will pay for it. As Ben Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic”.

Capitalism FAILS every time it is tried! It fails in that, it isn’t perfect. Market failures are real.
It is just that every other system FAILS EVEN MORE. Other systems don’t fix market failures, they add their own, bigger, failures.

Exactly. And since people are imperfect, any system created by people will also be imperfect. The best we can hope for is a system that has the least amount of injustice, the least amount of corruption, and that self adjusts when things get too far out of balance. Capitalism and Democracy are, so far, the best systems we’ve discovered for providing that. This is because they embrace and accept human nature, with all it’s flaws, instead of trying to force people, from the top down, into being something they are not.

I doubt anyone is alive today that ever experienced a real Free Enterprise / Free Market system. That went bye bye when government interventions with regulations and taxation started controlling every aspect of products and production. I dare anyone to find anything that is sold, that has not been taxed or regulations imposed on it. Not even a roadside produce stand is exempt.

Capitalism is a made up word from a German Socialist in the first half of the 1800s that thought everyone should live like cavemen working together as a tribe to provide all their requirements. By each person doing what they do and sharing it with everybody and they would get a portion of what everyone else contributed…. After the biggest and strongest most influential got their first choices and gave out what they didn’t want to the weaker and less liked members. Which in today’s world are the elites and affluent and elected members of government or the despot rulers that took power from the populace and made themselves royalty. As well as others that the population put on pedestals for their abilities to entertain them.

The only “failures of capitalism” are products that people do not like or have been made obsolete by something else.

He became president of Zimbabwe in 1987, although he was Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987. I despise Carter for a number of reasons, but you can’t lay this one at his door. Christopher Soames’s failure to sanction ZANU-PF for voter intimidation during the 1980 election was the linchpin to Mugabe’s political future.

Eric
Our Heads of Commonweath meetings, with all the Traditional English Colonies attending way back when, were always pumping up his tyres and former Aussie PM Malcolm Fraser was a noted Advocate of The Zimbabwe gangster.
The Fraser legacy further dims due to his support thru The Commonwealth Heads and … The Lancaster House Agreement…that was crucial to Mugabe’s Rein of Terror and Economic Blitz of The Zimbabwe Nation.

Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace are out it looks like in a “a bloodless correction”, finally, and the Army probably (or should) have his feet to fire where he has buried all the loot. When the Zimbabwe Veterans, who were the ones that locally organized the thuggery the last 30+ years turns on you, then you know you have no more authority and the jig is up. If they meet the same fate as Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife in Romania in 1989, then that will be a good sign for the history books that despotism doesn’t pay. And nor should we send any hard earned or borrowed cash to all the other despotic countries around the world to cash their climate (Paris) cheques. Bad enough we pay for all these misfits to attend Bonn, Germany this last week at these lavish climate conferences.

Despotism pays quite well, actually. Despots think they will be the one who never gets overthrown, that’s all. When they do, some of them get to keep the loot, others not so much. When the die, they lose it all, a lesson that seems to be lost on Soros. Even too much is never enough. Not all despots are politicians. Multi-billionaire-ism is also a form of despotism.

The whole tax thing is moot, countries can only sign themselves into doing it and handing over the money. Most know that in the democracies it won’t fly with there population and it’s dead in the water.

Oddly many oil producing countries are not democracies in any real sense , think Russia, some in no sense at all think SA, and they also have no intention at all of going down this route. Indeed some of them are looking for ‘payouts’ not to ‘pay-in’
Were as the ‘evil west ‘ is not actually a big area for oil production on a world scale , so their best hope for ‘free cash ‘ is actual not the place to go in this case to get it.

When any idea or theory has been dogmatized and becomes the ‘consensus’ ‘conventional wisdom’ reality, henceforth and from then on, providing empirical proof is but an inconvenience that serves no purpose in the fantasy world that has been conjured out of nothingness.
So…..Who really pays when the fossil fuel industries are taxed? Do you reckon it may be the same payers who pay when hospitals and doctors and other healthcare professionals and other health care delivery institutions are taxed? The end-user consumer Citizens?

The COST of taxes doesn’t just go from the tax collector to the point of payment and stop there, you know. When Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric pays taxes, the money with which he pays comes from a GE customer as some part (large) of the prices they are paying for GE products and services. Businesses — and their employees — are tax collectors and the collection is done as a large part (more than half) of the prices of their goods and services.

It’s our responsibility to take in all refugees, fight or stop all wars (it changes depends on situation), feed and tackle climate change for every person in every country according to the leftist fringe.

The lesson with the Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar and the Rohingya Muslims gets lost on leftist fringe. You never really know the devil you are supporting in a foreign country and by making someone a winner you make someone a loser. USA and Britian thought they were doing the right thing at the end of World War 2 in setting up the state of Israel that didn’t work out so well either, it created a loser who is a little bit upset.

Whatever we do it is always the wrong thing to the leftist fringe and so do nothing they will whine and make the same noise.

The people of Myanmar got sick of Muslims robbing them, raping them and exploiting them
So they started shooting the mongrels.
Now Myanmar folk are the bad guys and the rotten, stinking Mozzies are the good guys.
Go figure.

The people of Myanmar got sick of Muslims robbing them, raping them and exploiting them …

There is a long history of insurgency by the Muslims. link I’m not sure that excuses the ethnic cleansing that’s happening. On the other hand, there is evidence that some folks will make out like bandits by grabbing the land occupied by the Muslims. link

The Burmese may have a valid fear that the Muslims will flood in from Bangladesh and swamp them. The Serbians lost their ancestral homeland that way. link

I’m not sure of very much but I am sure that some folks are exploiting the situation for their own benefit.

The climate change controversy has been about kleptocratic politics by third world politicians and their enablers in various NGOs. As Earl Worrall points out, most of the economic problems of the “impacted” countries is due to their economic system, with no rule of law or property rights.

Many of the third world countries I referred to are not Muslim. Neither Mobutu or Mugabe are or were Muslim, so your reflexive SJW reaction is not on point. Much of Oceanea and Asia, let alone Central America, are not Muslim either. Kleptocratic rulers are mostly only nominally religious, anyway, even if their professed faith is Marxism.

The constant bleating by the UN for Western Countries to give them more Climate Change reparation money …. or any money for some countries …. is the sound of CAGW failing. The transfer of wealth is only happening through the transfer of industry and that has mainly been to China. Not fast enough for them so they go right to the source of their desire, money. The CAGW ruse is easy to pitch when the health of future children is the shill but not so easy when giving up lifestyle is the answer. Telling someone they are responsible for other peoples’ misfortune because they raped the land isn’t selling well in the developed countries that are the donors.

News FLASH: Trump leadership on display. Having courage to tell the climate hustlers they won’t get US money allows the other countries who also know CC is hustle to keep their cash too.
The Climate Hustle is in the early stages of collapse as the cargo planes carrying cash don’t land.
Trump Leadership.

Trump pulling out of the Paris accord was true leadership according to what most readers of this site know and understand about Global Warming. With the $100 billion green fund, a major underpinning of the accord now in serious jeopardy, its just a matter of time before beneficiary countries start to lose interest and the agreement starts to unravel. Should be amusing to see how this unfolds. MAGA!

The political victory can only be guaranteed when the pseudoscience rent-seeking swamp is drained and, as Dr Lindzen proposes, climate research monies are cut by 90%.
Clear out the climate rent seekers, cut off their money!
Leave maybe two research teams in the US studying climate.

“One of the options being discussed is to raise money through taxes on fossil fuel industry. “Countries are looking for money that is additional to the US$ 100 billion […]”

That’ll be extra money on top of the $100Billion, per year, that they were never, ever going to get, whatever administration rules the roost in the US.
As Satan is my witness, is there no end to the unbridled avarice, arrogance, and deluded sense of expectant entitlement displayed by these people?

Michael Hart Further to the “”One of the options being discussed is to raise money through taxes on fossil fuel industry” Don’t they realise that there are already very high taxes on Fossil Fuel. Here in the UK 61% tax for petrol and 59% for diesel are already levied, Admittedly that just goes into our Government’s pocket and not for developing countries, but how much more can be squeezed out of motorists. This high tax level is also a further point against the viability of EVs. If they become popular and supplant ICEs can you see the government sitting back and let all that tax money vanish. Somehow they will introduce some form of taxation for EVs to make up the difference .

Its nearly always about the money… or some twisted, self-important idealism.

Trillions have been wasted on this anti-CO2 nonsense, and climate trough swillers, and AGW puppets still bend over and twist facts and lie, and distort, to support an agenda designed, in the words of those driving the agenda, to destroy western society.

Why anyone that is actually part of western society would do this, is beyond me.

When this idiotic CO2-hatred is over, society will not be kind to them for what they have done.

LdB
“Here are our eco warriors of the board standing on a sea wall in Apia, Samoa. Got to clock those flyer miles up.”
But, surely, they paddled a sea-going canoe to Apia, which you and I know is in Samoa [where, incidentally, the local Rugby board is bankrupt; its President happens to be the prime Minister [not sure if that comes with the job].]
Longish paddle, true, but there are enough of these stars to have three watches paddling; although they will have exhaled CO2 on the way – I am sure they didn’t fly!
They are the superheroes of the Green Climate Fund!

Climate change is the new magic term that opens the door to free Western money. The same thing happened in Africa during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. They didn’t have money to do HIV tests (or even access to the technology), so they simply diagnosed normal diseases (like TB, pneumonia, etc.) as AIDS (per WHO and CDC criteria), and got tons of western money for doing so. Now every problem is due to climate change. Same thing, different day.

Without question, poverty comes from oppression of the human spirit. Dictators who take it all for themselves, and like Magabe give handouts, such as giving formerly successful British farms to friends who know nothing about farming, drive their countries towards poverty. Oligarchs in the USA are just as much fraudsters in their “Best Govt that Money can buy”. History proves the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. The 2nd Amendment was accepted to make sure Govt stayed benevolent (my opinion.)

The current hysteria about the possibility that a beneficial nutrient (CO2) that is touted by the MSM, the UN, BBC, and the European Union as a crisis that might lead to the end of Mankind (the world as we know it) serves commercial, social and political ends but is totally at odds with common sense and science. Correlation does not prove causation. Remember, the coral atolls have survived for millennia with sea levels going from ice age -300 feet to current slight, slow rises.

From the article: “One of the options being discussed is to raise money through taxes on fossil fuel industry. “Countries are looking for money that is additional to the US $100 billion, because loss and damage is additional to the mitigation and adaptation needs. The US $100 billion was agreed upon long before the issue of loss and damages became part of discussions at these negotiations.”

The way this is worded you would think the U.S. is still on the hook for $100 billion. I guess the author doesn’t know that Trump has put the halt to paying out this $100 billion. No $100 billion for you!

More sarcasm goes never.
But indeed , “Mohamed” is right.
Even our self-proclaimed “climate chancellor” Merkel, who had been brought into the media as such, had no say in a Nullinger number before the Dancing Congress. The clean-up after the congress will take weeks, mentally and physically. The Bonn garbage collection will get enough to do and many hotel owner will wish that his hotel had been renovated from the climate funds.

Rather ironic they have Arnie come in to tell them how to rebrand their fear industry .
Now Arnie is a world class promoter no doubt .
But between the Hummer , stogies , steroid use , the maid knock up and a track record of destruction movies
the green tie just isn’t enough .
But feel free put Arnie out there as the mascot . He ain’t no Ghandi and none of the other Hollywood
liberals are either . Desperate very desperate .

[Arnie a promoter? No one can do something for his looks, but then should not be advertised with apparently lack of charisma and lack of appearance. Trump is prettier and more charismatic.
The climate conference is a failure, you can see from the German indulgence trade with millions of euros. So money should make it possible for Merkel to call herself climate chancellor, to cover up the fact that Germany’s “energy transition” in its very own term, the reduction of CO2 has failed terrific and the future looks even worse than the present. The issue is also a major issue in the current coalition negotiations. It could well be that Merkel will soon be Climate Chancellor without land.

So send the money can round to all the other good Citizens in the eyes of you eco-fringe, France, Britian etc. I suppose China gets a free walk because they are a developing nation even though they would spend that on a sporting event if it showed the country in a good light.

I like your example that is $9.1m and $10m next year the admin costs are 3 times that but as usual Griff can’t dare criticize anything. Please show us all the projects you can find there is $131M kicking around somewhere.

Oh now I see why Germany put the money in they were way down on there amount. They were at 16% of agreed contribution that takes them to 80%. They were the lowest contributor of all the major countries and have to give another couple hundred million to go.

So that now leaves UK and then France as the largest outstanding. I assume USA isn’t go to come forward with another $2B.

So Griff go talk to your politicians mate your country are a mob of eco-criminals, isn’t that what you are if you don’t pay up 🙂

@Griff
wait, what? You are giving “improve drainage, wetlands and climate-proofing infrastructure” example?
Last time i checked, drainage aka wetland destruction 1) had just nothing to do at all with climate change, and 2) were absolute no-no for watermelons
So basically, you boast of diversion of money supposed to fight climate change into works of environment destruction under the “climate change” excuse, greenwashing included?
Is it really the best you could find, Griff?

@Griff
Of course “Proofing powergrids against hurricane damage in the Caribbean might be a great use of spending.”
It will be so, whether “severe hurricanes are part of climate change” or not. So this kind of spending has just nothing to do at all with climate change, and is actually just the kind of the kind of work skeptics agree to: really useful right now, for known real reasons (hurricanes DID, DO, and WILL happen, climate change or not), not fairytales one.
And it will NOT help to prevent climate change in anyway. It will actually require work, energy, and more CO2 and GHG in the atmosphere, and it will also help people keep a higher carbon footprint that they would without a working grid, so this is the kind of work you should be opposed to, if you had any coherence. But you don’t.

Actually “Proofing powergrids against hurricane damage where it is already know to occur” is just the Skeptic agenda
* cope with known real current issue now
* cope with “could … extremely likely (that is, not so sure after all)” later issue (if any) … when they really show (if they do…)
It is the opposite for you agenda
* not just cope with, but prevent now, at all cost and by any means (including chasing, jailing and killing dissenting voice, genoiciders no less); with “may be … could … extremely likely (that is, not so sure after all)” later issue
* all other current issue are just too small to be cared about.

As i said: green-washing and pitiful try to take credit from unrelated good work, your kind are actually against.

Foreign Aid and other payments to poor countries have an atrocious record. This will be no different.
Already Obama stumped up cash but as far as I know none or few others have.
Trump is right in his “put up or shut up” stance.
The UN is incapable of handling any real world problems. Words are nice but but feed few.

The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. It is all a matter of science. It can be shown that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. It is Mother Nature that is cause of climate change and it is Mother Nature that has been responsible for extreme weather events. So the party at fault with regards to any damages caused by extreme weather events and climate change is Mother Nature. So it is Mother Nature that should be sued in court and should be held responsible for all related damages and expenses. Lots of luck on collecting on a judgement against Mother Nature.

“loss and damage is additional to the mitigation and adaptation needs. The US$ 100 billion was agreed upon long before the issue of loss and damages became part of discussions at these negotiations.”

The $100 m was agreed long before they had any costs for ‘mitigation’ or ‘adaptation’. When you are grabbing money, it is best to have a nice, big, round number in mind. It makes the accounting so much easier.

The Climate Charade is always chock-full of drama and intrigue. Of course, money is the underlying theme, but what’s amusing about it is the pretense that it is mostly about “saving the planet”. It is all political theater, with pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo painted on top. And now, to make things even more amusing we have the former star performer of the show, the US, refusing to play along. Now they are torn between chastising and berating, and cajoling and begging for us to come back into the fold, when they aren’t simply pretending that nothing has changed and everything is hunkey dorey. Hilarious stuff really.

Huh, Arnie a world class promoter? Arnie looks like he is accidentally get in the new supposedly women-hostile app with which you can make-up off women digitally. But in reality. Arnie used to look like Skeletor in the past years, now like his post – mortem zombie. Trump looks nicer.
But aside this, nobody can do something for his looks, but then one should not advertise with lack of charisma and lack of appearance.
The climate conference is a failure, you can see from the German indulgence trade with millions of euros. So money should make it possible for Merkel to call herself Climate Chancellor, to cover up the fact that Germany with its “Energiewende” in its very own term, the reduction of CO2 has failed terrific and the future looks even worse than the present.

“Rather ironic they have Arnie come in to tell them how to rebrand their fear industry.
Now Arnie is a world class promoter no doubt “.

Arnie a promoter? No one can do something for his looks, but then should not be advertised with apparently lack of charisma and lack of appearance. Trump is prettier and more charismatic.
The climate conference is a failure, you can see from the German indulgence trade with millions of euros. So money should make it possible for Merkel to call herself climate chancellor, to cover up the fact that Germany’s “energy transition” in its very own term, the reduction of CO2 has failed terrific and the future looks even worse than the present. The issue is also a major issue in the current coalition negotiations. It could well be that Merkel will soon be Climate Chancellor without land.

Those silly foreigners–they’ve already been paid and continue to be paid:

Increased atmospheric CO2 over the past 50 years, according to some studies, has caused world-wide foodstuff production to increase by 15-25% (which isn’t surprising since trees, depending on variety, are now growing from 30-70% faster for the same reason).

The math is simple: Currently, foodstuff production accounts for a seventh of the world-wide GDP of ~$70 Trillion, which would be $10 Trillion. Taking the lower estimate for increased foodstuff production (15%) of that would be $1.5 Trillion, which divided by a worldwide population of 7.5 billion (an admittedly high estimate) results in $200 per year for every man, woman and child on the Earth!

That’s the annual contribution industrial countries (those that have substantially enriched atmospheric CO2 over the past 50 years) make indirectly to developing nations. Another way of looking at it: Since at least 2/3 of the world’s population is found in developing nations, the “annual payment” to them is $1 Trillion!!

I think that’s more than enough. Indeed, all that additional food has averted massive famine and starvation. They should be grateful rather than greedy.

The evidence of the Asian miracle, the rapid rise of formerly poor countries which embraced low tax free market economics and property rights is irrefutable.

low tax? No, they weren’t. The ‘Asian Tigers’ governments all drew c. 72%-75% of governmental income from land taxes. Taiwan used a direct land tax, Hong Kong was land leases and so was Singapore.. All three nations used income tax of 10% on all high incomes rising to 15% on even higher incomes with a 5% sales tax on certain commodities, mostly imported. Hong Kong was leased from China so land could not be traded.
Since WWII the World Bank has tried hard to demolish and remove Land Taxes where it can. California used land based property tax from about 1903 to 1978, when they dropped the land tax. Over the next twenty years California went from manufacturing everything it needed to bankruptcy. Michigan did the same in the 1990s and in 2008 General Motors almost failed.

Physiocracy was surely wrong in its premises, but its conclusion (tax only land — and only moderately– , free trade, low tariffs, Laissez-faire) were sound, and growth and freedom friendly. Business and income taxes are the most economic-stupid and dictatorship-friendly ever invented.

For permission, contact us. See the About>Contact menu under the header.

All rights reserved worldwide.

Some material from contributors may contain additional copyrights of their respective company or organization.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on WUWT. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. This notice is required by recently enacted EU GDPR rules, and since WUWT is a globally read website, we need to keep the bureaucrats off our case!
Cookie Policy